Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 40

• Use makes a better soldier than the most urgent considerations of duty,--familiarity with danger enabling him to estimate the danger. He sees how much is the risk, and is not afflicted with imagination; knows practically Marshal Saxe's rule, that every soldier killed costs the enemy his weight in lead.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, Imagination, Soldier

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.132, Harvard University Press

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• Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinction. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. It is like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, can plead any immunity; they must walk gingerly, according to the laws of ice, or down they must go, dignity and all.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Ice, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.86, Harvard University Press

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• Youth is everywhere in place.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Youth

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.256, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

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• Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Believe, Men, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.178, Penguin

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• The world - this shadow of the soul, or other me - lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult... So much only of life as I know by experience... The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Lying, Loss

  "The prose works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In two volumes" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Library, 2005.

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• ...as there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we see and know, Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man ever got above, but they tower over us, and most in the moment when our interests tempt us to wound them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Spiritual, Wall, Lying

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.140, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mean, Needs, May

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.23, Courier Corporation

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• Dreams and beasts are two keys by which we find out the keys of our own nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Keys, Two

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• To clothe the fiery thought
  In simple words succeeds,
  For still the craft of genius is
  To mask a king in weeds.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Weed, Kings, Simple

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “Emerson's Literary Criticism”, p.85, U of Nebraska Press

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• Beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form were just ready to flow into other forms.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Flow, Transition

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “Emerson's Literary Criticism”, p.48, U of Nebraska Press

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• Why needs a man be rich? Why must he have horses, fine garments, handsome apartments, access to public houses, and places of amusement? Only for want of thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Thoughtful, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1169, Delphi Classics

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• To the young mind every thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground whereby contrary and remote things cohere and flower out from one stem.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Flower, Thinking

  "The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature addresses and lectures", Vol. 1, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Library, 2006.

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• The crystal sphere of thought is as concentrical as the geological structure of the globe. As our soils and rocks lie in strata, concentric strata, so do all men's thinkings run laterally, never vertically.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Lying, Thoughtful

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841). “The method of nature: An oration, delivered before the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, in Maine, August 11, 1841”, p.7

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• To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Wisdom, Time

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.207, Penguin

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• It is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them that is just as wonderful that he should see with them; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Wisdom, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Lee Grossman (2005). “A Year with Emerson: A Daybook”, p.192, David R. Godine Publisher

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• Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Knowledge, Suffering

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.17, 谷月社

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• But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all, they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the actual for the necessary and talk down to the young. Let them then become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and power.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Eye, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.74, Penguin

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• Belief and love,--a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Brother, Believe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.44, Penguin

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• Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented with fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere.--Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Selfish, Pride

  Ralph Waldo, Emerson, (2013). “Nature - Conduct of Life”, p.191, Read Books Ltd

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• There is a principle which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful lord: we are not to do, but to let do; not to work, but to be worked upon.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Simple, Dwelling, Principles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.399

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• I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Evanescence, Fingers, Hardest

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.473, Library of America

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• I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Differences, Age, Ugly

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Heart of Emerson's Journals”, p.317, Courier Corporation

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• Profound sincerity is the only basis of talent as of character.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Profound, Talent

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: With a Biographical Introduction and Notes”

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• What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with hope or fear? In himself is his might. Let him regard no good as solid but that which is in his nature, and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves; let him scatter them on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite productiveness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Summer, Men, Wind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.86, Courier Corporation

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• Under every deep a lower deep opens.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Very Deep

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.403, Library of America

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